In mountainous Shanxi, pit accidents kill many men too young to marry.
But in February 2013 Geng left to take up mayorship in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province, leaving behind a landscape pock-marked by construction.
These are just three of the mysterious images in Shanxi, a hauntingly beautiful photobook by the Chinese photographer Zhang Xiao, which captures the age-old rituals of the annual lunar new year festival in the country's Shanxi province.
Shanxi by Zhang Xiao is available now, published by Little Big Man books.
Shanxi is a seductive book, a glimpse of a world of pagan custom that somehow endures against the odds, dreamlike and entrancing.
Today's Datong in Shanxi province is a third-tier city of 3.3 million people (Beijing and Shanghai are first-tier cities out of a five-tier ranking), with a vastly expanded urban area of almost 50 square kilometres.
That still seems to be the case, even with a subject matter as exotic as the pagan festivities in Shanxi.
Insiders say it wants to tie up with another Chinese broker, possibly Shanxi Securities.Other such ventures look uncertain.
He owns no flat and, he says, does not have much of a life outside his work.Mr Zhang, who is 27, is beginning his climb up the bureaucracy in the capital of a province, Shanxi, south-west of Beijing, which is reputed to be among the most corrupt and least competently governed.
The coal-mining province of Shanxi has lost the majority of its 13-member party leadership.
Yet during his stay in America the Dalai Lama is expected to lay out concessions to China on such a scale that he might be invited back: first to visit Wutaishan, a mountain in Shanxi province sacred to Buddhists; and later, maybe, Tibet itself.It might seem odd, given its rhetoric, for the Chinese government even to think of a deal with the Dalai Lama.
